race review

The week is in full swing over here and at this point I’m just along for the ride. As I’m sure you already know, we had a pretty cold exciting weekend with racing and Brewgaloo-ing and brunching.

First off, the race!

This was my first triathlon of the season, the Beaverdam Olympic Triathlon (for those who don’t know it’s a 1500m swim, 24 mile bike, and 10k run). I did this one last year also so my main goal this year was to beat my times from last year. And. I. Did. #ballerstatus

This was from 2014. I had a minor panic attack on the swim (my first open water swim with a wetsuit) and backstroked 90% of the thing! I’m particularly proud that my backstroke is as strong as my freestyle/crawl. Although it may also be that my crawl just sucks. But whatever. I

I finished third in my age group that year which was exciting! Never mind the fact that it was 3/6. Third is third.

And these are my results from this year! About 11 min faster! Woohoo! I shaved some time off of each leg 🙂 <–there’s a shaving joke in there somewhere but I’m too tired to find it

Swim:

I actually bought my own wetsuit this year instead of renting one and made sure to get comfortable in the water before I started. Then when we started, I didn’t panic and remembered to breathe! (always a plus) I was able to swim the whole thing and only took a couple of breaks to float and get my bearing in the water. This was a huge success for me.

Now, what’s weird is that usually a wetsuit swim is COLD. Don’t get me wrong, the water was not warm by any means, but it was warmer in the water than out of it! The transition went pretty well although I did have a minor issue getting my left foot out of the wetsuit, but I’ve never had to worry too much about my transitions since I’m used to quick changes from my ballerina days.

Bike:

The bike was freezing. Actually. freezing is an understatement. For some unknown reason, I forgot my arm warmers and toe covers so I was just in my tri kit for the duration of the bike. The majority of my thoughts on the bike consisted of “I can’t feel my feet at all. If I get frostbite from this stupid race imma be so pissed” “I should eat/drink something, wait my hands don’t work. Come on warm up enough to grab a water bottle” Rinse and repeat.

Luckily the bike course changed from last year, so instead of constant rolling hills we had a lot of flat areas and low incline hills. So that was lovely. The rain, wind, and cold was not.

I did have a bike-buddy for most of the race. We happened to have the same pace for the entire ride! So we bonded and chatted it up as a distraction from the weather. Sadly she’s not local otherwise she’d probably be my new bestie. She’s in the purple behind me in the pic 🙂

My second transition was also a little slow. This was more due to the fact that I had lost all feeling in both my hands and feet. Shoelaces are hard. Note to self: get those elastic shoelaces.

Run:

The run was an out-and-back that we covered twice. I love these because it feels shorter than it actually is. It’s like focusing on a landmark when you run and saying you’ll run to that and then walk, only this time the landmark was a water station. My feet were still completely numb for the first 2 miles of the run which had me worried for a bit. I couldn’t control how my feet were landing so I hurt the outside of my right foot a bit. The run course was not very flat, but at that point I was just glad to be off the bike and warming up so I really didn’t care about the hills.

The other awesome benefit of having 2 laps of the course was seeing Indy and Steve a lot! When I was getting ready to finish, I grabbed the leash from Steve and Indy literally pulled me across the finish line. I mean, she took off! I think she was super excited to finish and GTFO of the crazy place with a lot of scary people doing stuff. It’s super scary.

Anyways, I got second place in my age group this year! 2/7 so the field improved in both directions 🙂 And I got my time in under 3 hrs which also makes me happy 🙂

I was pretty cold so we (and a ton of other triathletes) stopped off at Starbucks on the way home for a nice hot drink to finish the day.

We had a fantastic race yesterday where we both PR’d! Which is a slightly bigger deal for me than Steve since this was his first so any finishing time is going to be your best finishing time.

I have always enjoyed reading race recaps from other people so here is my shot at a race recap 😀

We woke up at 4:30am (OMG) because the streets started closing at 5:30am and we needed to get to the parking decks. Yes this early morning wake up is as awful as it sounds. No they don’t get easier with more races.

The race didn’t start until 7:00 am so we had an hour and a half to chill and freeze in the wind. We hopped into a nearby hotel lobby with a bunch of other runners. This was glorious because hotel lobby = toilets that flush! And we were able to wake up a bit before it was time to get corralled!

There were almost 6000 runners doing the Rock n Roll Raleigh Half Marathon this year so they did a wave start to help prevent congestion at the start (thank god!!). I was in corral 4, so I wished Steve good luck and left him to find corral 13.

And then we were off!

Crazy right?!?

I was shooting for 1:50 (8:20 min/mile) so I hung out with the pace group for a while. I also hung out with them because we had the same shoes on and therefore they were cool peeps ya know. The course was mostly downtown Raleigh which has some small rolling hills. Here’s an overview of the course with the elevation profile below it.

The first downhill part was AWESOME. Was nice and relaxed and didn’t have my music on and had a great time! Then around mile 6 we started going uphill. FOR. 3. MILES. It wasn’t all steep. But it was all uphill. This was where I lost the pace group. Which really only happened because I walked through the aid station at 7.2 miles and grabbed a GU (the only fuel I took for the entire race). It was also where I decided that a little extra motivation was needed and I started up the iPod which was a miracle-worker for my morale!

I got my legs back around mile 10 and then promptly lost them on that last steep hill you see at the end of the elevation profile. Ugh. I walked a bit. Not gonna lie.

The finish was right around the corner though! So I picked up the pace for the last 1.5 miles and had some sub-8 min miles there at the end and finished strong at my new PR of 1:50:12!!!

Steve was still on the course so I speed walked through the finisher’s area and grabbed everything that was handed towards me (water, Gatorade, chocolate milk, pretzels, a sandwich, a banana, and a protein bar) and made a beeline for the gear check so I could grab my phone and try to get pictures of Steve.

I think I was a little out of it at this part because I saw a llama chillin on main street! I was like….OMG is that a white llama?!? Why would someone bring a llama to a race?!? Who has a llama in Raleigh?!?….wait…..that’s not a llama….that’s a dog. WTF Amanda…..

Anywho. I was able to catch Steve on his home stretch and ran with him for a bit before I realized that that was stupid cause I just finished a half-marathon and was tired and my feet hurt.

See him in the orange!! Note: we both wore orange for this race. It was embarrassing.

On my way to catch him at the finish line, I hobbled walked past a new patisserie and stopped in to grab some celebratory macarons! (They were incredible and dreamy) If you are ever in the Raleigh area, check out Lucettegrace for some seriously delicious treats.